Comment Do what I did: take a summer off (Score 1) 386
Do what I did and take a summer off.
Actually, I did a co-op (for which I received somewhat useless credit from my university) which sent me to Europe and Africa to do some computer work. They were specifically looking for a single person to do this, and it wasn't a common opportunity in my experience, but I jumped at the chance.
The following summer, I took part of the summer off from my required courses. For some courses, our short summer semester was divided in two, and in the first 6 weeks I took an outstanding gen-ed course, and in the second 6 weeks I went on a study abroad trip to Italy and studied Italian and Renaissance art, neither of which I had studied before or had a prior interest in. We studied at an Italian University from Monday to Friday (sometimes Thursday) and traveled around on the weekends, and then the last week was spent traveling full time.
That was one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life, and the irrelevant-to-my-degree but relevant-to-my-travels courses served as a nice break from my beloved 1's and 0's and greatly enriched the experience.
In short, I highly recommend finding a way to study abroad, even if it delays your graduation briefly.